Hayley Mary, The Jezabels

The members of Australian band The Jezabels met up at Sydney University, subsequently crafting a sound that merges pop with lyrics that reveal a deep sense of social awareness.

Lou Reed / Perfect Day
A perfectly tragic day. It reminds you that all the mistakes you’ve made are essentially who you are. And the most beautiful epitome of this is that the singer can’t even reach the climax without his voice breaking. Listen to this track for the same reason you smoke cigarettes: for the love of pain.

Foreigner / I Wanna Know What Love Is
I heard on the radio that Foreigner nearly broke up over this song, divided by their desire to remain a hard rock band and ultimately having to admit that the muses had blessed them with one of the greatest love songs in history.

The Righteous Brothers / Unchained Melody
So I kind of like melodrama. This song reminds you that popular music is still supposed to be art. It’s still supposed to be human. The unchaining of the melody unchains my heart. Seriously, I’m not even exaggerating: it’s bursting out as I speak.

Cyndi Lauper / Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Now that we’ve got hindsight on the womens’ lib movement, and are in the age of cynicism and broken homes, this song gets a little trivialised. But I believe its playful nature can endure whatever bullshit you want to throw its way. The fact that it was written by a man is also hilariously ironic and emblematic of the female pop-star predicament.

Juice Newton / Angel of the Morning
‘Maybe the sun’s light will be dim, but it won’t matter anyhow. If morning’s echo says we’ve sinned, well it was what I wanted now’. From future, to present, to past, to present tense in less than thirty seconds. Isn’t that sort of how the experience of lovemaking goes, really? Ha ha.

Cloud Control / Death Cloud
Not attempting to analyse too deeply such a contemporary song, I include these guys because they maintain a magical reality that I thought was lost to contemporary pop. Something sinister is always lurking not too far below (or in this case, above) anything as seemingly sweet as this perfectly structured pop song. But it strangely feels like it’s all going to be okay. If you haven’t already, please try them out for yourself.

Kate Bush / Wuthering Heights
A critic once said of my own singing style that it was ‘histrionic’. It was meant to be an insult. Maybe if said critic had recalled that the female throughout the ages has been physically, emotionally, sexually and spiritually oppressed, he would have allowed that at times one needs to overtly express that one is at total war with one’s emotions. Wuthering Heights (both song and the Bronte novel) remind me that I am not alone.

David Bowie / Heroes
I love this song because it’s so easily placed in 1970s Germany, yet it transcends all time-frames. That droning guitar riff — one of the most simple, repetitive, yet effective pieces of music I can think of — actually feels like there is a man somewhere pulling on a maiden’s heartstrings and everyone throughout every century, every battle, every tragic love story, can hear it.